[496] The Census of Ireland, 1841, Parl. Papers, 1843. “Report on the Table of Deaths,” by W. R. Wilde. The deaths in the family, with their causes, &c., in each of the previous ten years were entered on the census paper by the head of the family, or by the parish priest for him. These returns were, of course, far from exhaustive or correct.
[497] Graves, Clinical Medicine, 1843, p. 46. Remarking on the much greater frequency of fever in Ireland than in England, he says (p. 47): “Nothing can be more remarkable than the facility with which a simple cold (which in England would be perfectly devoid of danger), runs into maculated fever in Ireland, and that, too, under circumstances quite free from even the suspicion of contagion—in truth, except when fever is epidemic, catching cold is its most usual cause.”
[498] The principal work on the general circumstances of the Irish famine of 1846-47 is The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847, with notices of Earlier Irish Famines. By Rev. John O’Rourke, P.P., M.R.I.A. Dublin, 1875.
[499] Joseph Lalor, M.D., Dub. Quart. Journ. Med. Sc. N. S. III. 38.
[500] Cited by O’Rourke, p. 152.
[501] The Census of Ireland, 1851. Part V. Table of deaths, vol. I. Dublin, 1856, p. 235.
The following are a few instances of depopulation between 1841 and 1851.
| Union of Loughrea, Co. Galway. | ||
| 1841 | 65,636 | |
| 1851 | 38,698 | |
| Union of Clonakilty, Co. Cork. | ||
| 1841 | 52,185 | |
| 1851 | 31,473 | |
| Union of Kanturk, Co. Cork. | ||
| 1841 | 61,238 | |
| 1851 | 41,801 | |
| Parish of Kanturk. | ||
| 1841 | 4,096 | |
| 1851 | 6,754 | |
| Union of Portumna, Co. Galway. | ||
| 1841 | 30,714 | |
| 1851 | 19,747 | |
| Union of Skibbereen, Co. Cork. | ||
| 1841 | 57,439 | |
| 1851 | 37,283 | |
| Parish of Skibbereen. | ||
| 1841 | 9,557 | |
| 1851 | 8,931 | |
| Union of Skull, Co. Cork. | ||
| 1841 | 26,620 | |
| 1851 | 16,866 | |
| Parish of Skull. | ||
| 1841 | 2,895 | |
| 1851 | 3,226 | |
[502] Essay on the Principle of Population. Bk. IV. chap. XI. Thorold Rogers has in many passages emphasized the advantages of the English practice from medieval times of living on the dearest kind of corn; but he seems to have overlooked the priority of Malthus throughout the whole of the eleventh chapter of his fourth book. In Six Centuries of Work and Wages (p. 62), Rogers says: “Hence a high standard of subsistence is a more important factor in the theory of population than any of those checks which Malthus has enumerated.”
[503] Cited in Thomas Doubleday’s Political Life of Sir Robert Peel. London, 1856, II. 398 note.